Empirical Assessment of Effective E-Commerce Audit Judgment

Abstract

This global survey of 203 B2B E-Commerce auditors examined a model of E-Commerce audit effectiveness using the methods drawn from the information technology auditing and information systems research domain. The findings support the positive and significant relationship of information technology audit expertise and information and communication technology expertise on E-Commerce audit judgment while the system change management impact was indirect via information technology audit expertise. The results of this empirical study furthers our understanding of the role of an accountant in e-commerce audit engagement and the importance of auditor expertise in systems and network change management which has been an under researched area in E-Commerce auditing. The highly technology-centric nature of E-Commerce requires various expertise areas for the E-Commerce auditor to develop a higher level of audit judgment expertise. The most significant contribution made by this study to the accounting literature is the empirical validation of the theoretical observations and the professional opinions on the need of boundary spanning role played by accountants in the e-commerce audit engagements. E-Commerce audit judgment expertise model presented here uses global sampling of forty six countries with financial, information systems and operational auditor respondents. Further, this study provides measurement scales for future empirical studies to not only confirm these scales on independent samples but also to extend the theory developed and tested in this paper. It is hoped that the results of this study can provide a sound theoretical and operational basis for research focused on differentiating the efficacy of varying E-Commerce audit judgment expertise configurations and for future accounting studies that determine the paths of audit expertise system design and redesign for our fast changing technological milieu.